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BORIS JOHNSON could be allowed to ignore a parliamentary no-confidence vote and proceed with a no-deal Brexit followed by a general election, a former Supreme Court judge said today.
Jonathan Sumption said that MPs could only prevent this from happening by forming an alternative government in the 14 days before an election would be automatically triggered.
If this was not possible, Mr Johnson would have the power to set the date of the election for after October 31, the date on which Britain’s membership of the European Union is due to expire.
Lord Sumption told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that MPs could also fight a no-deal Brexit by passing a statute limiting the power of the government to pursue a no-deal Brexit by saying that it had to revoke Article 50.
Both options seemed like “very long shots,” he argued, given the parliamentary arithmetic.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has threatened to call a vote of no confidence in the government this autumn in an attempt to stop Britain being taken out of the EU without a deal.
Mr Johnson said the “last thing” he wanted to do was call a general election. But he could be left with no choice after his Commons majority was whittled down to one.
A cross-party group of around 70 MPs and peers led by the Good Law Project launched a legal bid to prevent suspending — or “proroguing” — Parliament to allow him to force through a no-deal Brexit
No date has been set to hear the case, and campaigners have admitted that they have less than three months until October 31.
Alex Gordon, who was convenor of the Left Leave campaign, argued that derailing Brexit would “backfire very badly” on MPs who were “elected on a manifesto of respecting the outcome of the referendum.”
He referred to an opinion poll carried out for the Observer last month, after Mr Johnson became PM, showing that the preferred option of 45 per cent of respondents was a no-deal Brexit, while 13 per cent preferred a negotiated Brexit deal and 28 per cent favoured Remain. Another 14 per cent expressed no preference.
Mr Gordon told the Star: “People want to see Brexit done. If Mr Johnson is capable of doing it, he will reap some sort of electoral reward for doing so — sadly, because he is an utter scoundrel.”
